Tag: Be fully present

We have all we need, now

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File:Az girl at the TV, e-citizen.jpg

There is no other time than now. We are not, contrary to what we think, “going” anywhere. It will never be more rich in some other moment than in this one. Although we may imagine that some future moment will be more pleasant, or less, than this one, we can’t really know. But whatever the future brings, it will not be what you expect, or what you think, and when it comes, it will be now too. It too will be a moment that can be very easily missed, just as easily missed as this one.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Photo Moonsun1981

Noticing the “buts”

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When the mind is coloured by a dualistic perspective, every experience – even moments of joy and happiness – is bounded by some sense of limitation. There is always a but lurking in the background. One kind of but is the but of difference: “Oh my birthday cake was wonderful but I would have liked chocolate cake instead of carrot cake”. Then there is the but of “better”: “I love my new house,  but my friend John’s place is bigger and has much better light”. And finally there is the but of fear: “I can’t stand my job, but in this market how will I ever find another one”…I’ve begun to recognize..that feelings of limitation, anxiety fear and so on are just so much neuronal gossip. They are in essence, habits. And habits can be unlearned.

Yongey Mingpur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living

The Uncomplicated moment

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Mindfulness, seeing clearly, means awakening to the happiness of the uncomplicated moment. We complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production. It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be.

Sylvia Boorstein

Sunday Quote: Colour

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There is not one little blade of grass,

there is no colour in this world

that is not intended to make men rejoice.

John Calvin

An unobserved life

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The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Eric Hoffer, American moral and social philosopher.

Just simply being fully present

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Dishes to wash LGC.jpg

While  washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.  At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. the fact that I am standing there and washing the dishes is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo: Ataraxes